R Balki is no stranger to dishing out socially aware yet entertaining dramas. His latest Pad Man – starring Akshay Kumar as Lakshmikant Chauhan, Radhika Apte as Gayatri Chauhan, and Sonam Kapoor as Pari Walia – is perhaps his most pertinent social commentary till now. Based on Twinkle Khanna’s short story The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, which in turn is inspired by the life of Arunachalam Muruganantham, Pad Man is relevant, important, and entertaining. But, it is still a flawed story.

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R Balki’s film does a fine job in portraying the taboos surrounding menstruation, especially in rural India, in the first half of his film. Pad Man establishes it in the very beginning that this is the story of a man who will do anything to make his wife happy. Even if that means facing extreme humiliation, social prejudice, and great personal loss. This is a good thing and bad, because, at times, the film reeks of male saviour complex. But, keeping in mind the actual regressive state of things in our country, the reaction of the secondary characters – who turn Lakshmikant into a social pariah – in the film isn’t unbelievable. Muruganantham was actually ostracised for his single-minded obsession to manufacture low cost sanitary napkins. He was denounced by his own people as a pervert for getting involved with all these “auraton wali batein”. Even though, for the most part the film is quite faithful to the real events it’s inspired by, it never shows how to tackle the taboos actually associated with menstruation.

While Akshay delivers a fine performance as the titular Pad Man, Radhika perfectly plays out the role of a woman who has been taught to desperately cling to every regressive taboo about womanhood. Radhika manages to render her own chemistry with Akshay with much-needed authenticity. Sonam manages to give a decent-enough performance within the limited time her character is provided, even though certain storylines attributed to her seem gratuitous.

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[Editor’s note: Possible spoilers ahead]

Though the film has an engrossing first half, the story on the other end of the intermission stumbles. Sonam Kapoor’s character Pari – an entirely fictional character with no real-life counterpart – is introduced in this half. Pari is the one who manages to take Lakshmikant’s innovation to the women who would earlier shut the door on his face. A male-led film about what is essentially a woman’s issue can come across as flippant and egregious. But this attempt falls flat for one particular reason – the attempt to inject the film with a romantic subplot that is so contrived that it’s actually cringeworthy. Balki could have shown Lakshmikant and Pari as colleagues, who become friends. But, by introducing an awkward romance between the two, abruptly, with absolutely no build-up or necessity whatsoever, he ruins things.

[End of spoilers]

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Certain things about the film would have been easier to digest, if it wasn’t based on such a well-known personality. Muruganantham is a renowned social entrepreneur, who invented a low cost sanitary napkin machine that has revolutionized the concept of menstrual hygiene in rural India. He hails from Coimbatore, which is in Tamil Nadu, but the fictitious version of Muruganantham in Pad Man becomes a Rajput Chauhan. If anything, this is a symptom of the hegemonic mindset shared by our countrymen, for whom the only relatable massy hero can be a Hindi-speaking North Indian, preferably who is also a member of the upper caste.

This isn’t the first film on Muruganantham’s life. He was the subject of Amit Virmani’s applauded documentary Menstrual Man as well as Abhishek Saxena’s Phullu in 2017. But, the reason a Pad Man was necessary is because it boasts of a mega star as the lead, which means a topic like menstruation will gain more eyeballs in certain pockets of India like never before. Perhaps a Rajkummar Rao would've been more well suited for a role like this one; however, he is yet to garner the same kind of fan following that an Akshay Kumar does. If there is one subject that needs to the attention of the masses, more than anything else, then it is menstrual hygiene.

We live in a country where only 12 per cent women use sanitary napkins, while 88 per cent resort to terribly harmful alternatives like unsanitary cloths, sand, and sometimes ashes. Approximately, 23 per cent of girls drop out of school after they start their periods due to a lack of options. Many have even died due to this situation.

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So yes, Pad Man is an important film for our times, no matter how reductionist the narrative is, no matter how easy it is to diss it from a highbrow perspective. One can only hope that it manages to evoke a significant shift in people’s mindsets, the very same people for whom a packet of sanitary napkins worth Rs.55 is a luxury. This is something no marketing gimmick can ever do, as Muruganantham said himself, “Menstrual hygiene is a subject that can’t be tackled by an advertising or a marketing team.”